IT events to attend in February

Conferences and trade shows focused on Linux, IT service management, outsourcing and telecommunications are among those you might want to check out in February if you're in the area or looking to take a little business trip (read about March events here). Here's a quick rundown of these and other events.

* The Green Grid, a consortium "dedicated to advancing energy efficiency in data centers and business computing ecosystems," hosts the First Annual Green Grid Technical Forum  Feb. 5-6 at the Parc Hotel in San Francisco. Executives from ADP and Enterprise-Rent-A-Car will be delivering keynote addresses. (Read a collection of Going Green stories from Network World here.)

* The Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE) takes place at the Westin Los Angeles Airport Feb. 8-10. It might provide you with a good warm-up for the big LinuxWorld Conference & Expo, which takes place Aug. 4-7 in San Francisco. The SCALE 6x event includes sessions on such topics as women in open source, Linux momentum in mobile, and virtualization on Linux and Xen. For more on open source, check out our list of open source companies to watch.

* The first of this year's three NANOG (North American Network Operators' Group) meetings takes place Feb. 17-20 in San Jose, Calif. NANOG describes itself as "an educational and operational forum for the coordination and dissemination of technical information related to backbone/enterprise networking technologies and operational practices." Its meetings are organized by Merit Network, a nonprofit Michigan organization that celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2006 (read our story on Merit here). On the agenda for NANOG42 are sessions on BGP troubleshooting techniques, and on whether ISPs and peer-to-peer networks can work together. Other NANOG meetings this year take place in Brooklyn, N.Y., June 1-4 and in Los Angeles Oct. 12-14.

* The 12th Annual International IT Service Management Conference at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas Feb. 18-21 will get you up to speed on best practices according to ITIL, ISO, COBIT and other business frameworks. Topics up for discussion include ITILv3, which debuted last spring. Help desk strategies and IT governance are among the event's other hot topics.

* Nervous about getting outsourced? Perhaps the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals’ (IAOP) Outsourcing World Summit will give you insight into the movement. The event takes place Feb. 18-20 at Disney's Contemporary Resort in Orlando. This year's theme is "Built for Change: Reconceptualizing the Corporation in an Era of Outsourcing, Offshoring and Globalization." Read about a recent survey that details reservations some smaller companies are having about sending jobs offshore.

• The annual SHARE event (run by an independent group started in 1955 that has a strong base in IBM shops) takes place in Orlando Feb. 24-29. It's always a good place to get your mainframe tech fix. The group just issued a study on how mainframes are living on via service-oriented architecture. Jeanette Horan, vice president for Business Process and Architecture Integration at IBM, is the event's keynote speaker. Read our colorful piece from 2005 on the group’s 50th anniversary.

* The HIMSS08 conference, taking place Feb. 24-28 at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Fla., is all about healthcare and IT, including electronic medical records. Google CEO Eric Schmidt is headlining the show, organized by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society, as a keynote speaker. Tied to the event is Cisco's Community for Connected Health Summit.

* Communications service providers and their suppliers will congregate in Nashville Feb. 24-27 for Comptel Plus Spring 2008. Arunas Chesonis, CEO of Paetec Holding is the keynote speaker. The case for offering managed services and the promise of IPTV are among session topics.

* The Institute for Applied Network Security holds its Mid-Atlantic Information Security Forum in Washington, D.C. Feb 25-26. The event is for information security professionals.

* Looking ahead to March, Network World's IT Roadmap Conference & Expo series of events kick off in Denver on March 4. Check out our list of all Network World events to see when the Roadmap is coming to your area and to register.

Know of other national or regional events we should have mentioned? Please comment below. Also, sign up to receive Network World's monthly Trade Show News Alert e-mail newsletter here. We publish bonus issues of the newsletter during busy trade show seasons.